The hunt for the origin of the AIDS virus began over twenty years ago. It was a journey that went around the world and involved painstaking research to unravel how, when, and where the virus first infected humans. Dorothy H. Crawford traces the story back to the remote rain forests of Africa - home to the primates that carry the ancestral virus - and reveals how HIV-1 first jumped from chimpanzees to humans in rural south east Cameroon. Examining how this happened, and how it then travelled back to Colonial west central Africa where it eventually exploded as a pandemic, she asks why and how it was able to spread so widely. From hospital intensive care wards to research laboratories and the African rain forests, this is the wide-ranging story of a killer virus and a tale of scientific endeavour.

About the Author
Dorothy H. Crawford is Emeritus Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University Of Edinburgh, where she has been Assistant Principal for Public Understanding of Medicine since 2007. She was elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2001, and awarded an OBE for services to medicine and higher education in 2005. Her previous books include The Invisible Enemy (OUP, 2000), Deadly Companions (OUP, 2007), and Viruses: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2011).


Book Information
ISBN 9780198743873
Author Dorothy H. Crawford
Format Paperback
Page Count 260
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 204g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 139mm * 16mm